Do you know who murdered 30 year old Darrell Donte Porter in 2015? Darelle Donte Porter was a 30-year-old African-American man from Mount Dora, Florida. Less than a year before his death, he had been grazed by a bullet in Leesburg while trying to shield a 12-year-old boy who was caught in a crossfire; the child was struck but survived.
On the night of September 15, 2015, residents on Vine Street in the nearby town of Sorrento heard what sounded like a truck, followed by four or five quick gunshots. One neighbor, Luther Parks, grabbed his own gun and went outside to investigate, but the street was dark and without lights, and he saw nothing. Around 11:30 p.m., a woman driving in the area of Vine Street and Oak Avenue saw a man lying on the ground in a driveway and called 911. When paramedics arrived, they discovered Darelle Porter had been shot multiple times. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office believed Porter had been walking down the street when he was killed.
They began looking into his activities in the hours leading up to his death and learned he had been seen in the Mount Dora and Sorrento areas between 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. that evening.
Two days after the shooting, detectives announced they were searching for a "person of interest" who they believed was the last person seen with Porter. The man was identified as Andrew “Smurf” Woodruff Jr., then 31. The two men had been spotted together in a light-colored pickup truck on the night of the murder. Authorities stressed they only wanted to question Woodruff to help piece together the puzzle of Porter's final hours. Woodruff had a lengthy criminal history and was also a person of interest in an unrelated attempted murder case from earlier that year.
No arrests were ever made in Darelle Porter’s killing, and the sources do not state if investigators were able to locate and speak with Woodruff. The case eventually went cold. As of February 2025, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the homicide and seeks information about Darelle Porter's whereabouts and activities on or about September 15, 2015, as well as the identity of anyone who was with him.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with information to contact its Cold Case Team at 352-343-9529 or email [email protected]. Anonymous tips can also be reported to Crimeline at 800-423-8477.
